Wednesday, May 20, 2009

What's New

Before I get back to some musicological topics, I want to announce the launch of my new website SheldonKessel.com The site is to be a companion to this blog, as well as a home for my many activities -- academic and otherwise. Currently, it focuses on musicology and includes a fairly lengthy academic paper which describes my ideas from this blog in much more detail. Look for it in the musicology section under the "heavy version" link. Or, go directly to the paper here.

The website and paper have taken up most of my time lately, so I haven't had much of a chance to write here. I hope to be back on track with more frequent posts next week. til then.....

Wednesday, May 6, 2009

The Supergenre Theory

As an undergraduate music composition student studying under Henry Gwiazda I became intrigued by an entire world of music I never knew existed. As part of my private lessons Dr. Gwiazda had me listen to music he thought I would benefit from hearing. This music included everything from singer-songwriter types like Bob Dylan, to classics such as the Beethoven string quartets, to music I had no way of classifying or comprehending. These listening experiences were the beginnings of my explorations into the labeling and interpreting of musical genre classifications.

Over the years my ideas have evolved into a broad all-encompassing genre labeling scheme which takes the form of a tree -- a taxonomic or genealogical-type tree. At the top of the tree is music -- just music. That is, organized sound, organized in any possible way.

From this basic starting point of simply music, the first division is into, what I label, the three Supergenre Systems. The Supergenre Systems are Art Music, Improvisational Music, and Popular Music. These large divisions occur due to their broad musical and socio-musical differences. Making sense of these broad categories is a primary goal for this blog. Stay tuned to future posts for more information about them.

The labels of Art Music, Improvisational Music and Popular Music seem to be more controversial than any perceived problems in creating the divisions. There is a perceptual problem with the "art" and "popular" labels, as if they are qualitative terms rather than categorical ones. I am in no way suggesting that Art Music is in some way more "artistic" than Improvisational or Popular musics. Nor do i suggest that in labeling a music as Popular music makes it appeal to a wide audience. ...and Improvisational does not suggest lack of coherent structure. All three are simply labels for making sense of this world of organized sound.

On a superficial musical level, the three Supergenre Systems seem fairly clear. Art Music as label takes the place of numerous constrictive synonyms such as "classical," "new music," "contemporary-classical," "chamber music," "Romantic opera," etc. to create an all-encompassing category for music which follows the western "serious" music tradition of following composers' intentions through written instructions. Popular Music could be seen as nearly the opposite of Art Music as it is transmitted primarily through oral tradition, tends to be simpler in form than Art Music and typically does not require formal training to become fluent in its musical language or technique. Improvisational Music is just that - improvisational. Improvisational music may have a general skeletal structure specified but it is primarily created as it is performed.

With these very general definitions of my Supergenre Systems, and your prior notions of musical genre in mind. Check out these examples and try to decide how you might categorize and label them.





Tuesday, May 5, 2009

Databases and Stores

I have more sites to offer that tackle the issue of musical categories. I completely forgot about them when writing the last entry here. Although their organizational schemes aren't as obvious and transparent as the All Music Guide , the sites are fun and interesting to explore.

First is Gracenote (formerly CDDB) - a service many people have used repeatedly but maybe not realized it. This is the (often) default database service that CD identifying software will contact to give you the album, artist, and track names to display while playing or ripping. The company seems to exist primarily for that purpose - other software contacts it to get the required info. However, as a consumer you can manually type in artists or albums to get biographical information as well as album information and even lyrics. Great fun!

A service very similar to Gracenote is the Open-Source MusicBrainz. This does for MP3s what Gracenote does for CDs, plus lots more! Being an Open-Source project, MusicBrainz has a number of client software applications and databases that make use of its technology. Some of the fairly unique features include the ability to identify a piece of music by sound, as well as having a listing of remixes and alternate versions of pieces of music created by other artists. And, relevant to my topic of genre - the database lists all the user-generated musical categories that an artist or piece of music fits into.

Discogs , another user-generated database, is similar to the All Music Guide, as it is a more traditional type of database with informational listings for artists and albums. It is not created as a software type database for music identification like MusicBrainz or Gracenote. Discogs major difference from the others is that it seems directed toward a collector type of audience. Catalog numbers are given for commercial releases on a number of formats. Users are also able to buy, sell, and create want-lists for other users to browse. As a bonus, Discogs lists production information such as musicians, producers, engineers, songwriters, etc.

These databases create ways of thinking about relationships of musical creators to listeners. Two principles tend to govern musical categorization - listener common-practice, and the music industry's common-practice for marketing purposes. Discogs and MusicBrainz are user generated while Gracenote is industry-driven. Previously mentioned Pandora Radio is a hybrid of the two, as is Last FM . What about some other industry-driven genre schemes? I'll be writing more about them later, but I encourage everyone to check out some online stores you've maybe never explored.

Everyone knows itunes - it remains the online sales leader, so I'll ignore that one for now. In second place, but catching up, is Amazon.com - another one everybody knows.
For something different check out:
Rhapsody - this link lets you skip the membership stuff
MP3.com - been around forever, changed formats a number of times, not sure of their future, currently a place to get free stuff
PureTracks - no frills
HDGiants - For those who hate the sound of downloaded music - only sells lossless format WMA files
LegalSounds - cheap and legal
Beatport - My favorite for dance music

These require membership, but can be good deals if you regularly buy music:
Emusic - mostly independant music - great for discovering new stuff
Napster - my personal favorite - get a napster lite membership to just buy mp3s without the extras

I know there are others out there. Do you have a non-itunes, non-amazon, favorite?